Mitch’s virtual London Marathon

I started running for St Ann’s a few years ago. I was trying to get fit and signed up for the Manchester 10k. I wanted to do it for charity and a friend recommended St Ann’s. Since then, I’ve done 10ks, Tough Mudders, half marathons, marathons, and even climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. I also had the idea for the #Sixtyin60 challenge, to try and get 60 people to run the 2019 Manchester 10k in 60 minutes. In the end, around 140 people ran for St Ann’s! 

This year would have been the 40th Anniversary of the London Marathon and 5 years since I ran my first marathon. In 2015, I signed up to do the Manchester Marathon and was challenged by friends to sign up to the London Marathon too. When the dates were released, the marathons were only 1 week apart!   

Five years later I thought, let’s do them both again. Unfortunately due to coronavirus, the London Marathon was postponed to October and is now virtual, so I’ll be running 26.2 miles on Sunday 4th October. Which means I’ll be running them one week apart, again! For me, this means redoing all the weeks of training, but I’ve never been defeated by a challenge. 

I still wanted to run a marathon on the 26th April, the date of the London Marathon, so I completed my “Front Garden Marathon”. Keeping social distancing measures, my family joined me for the last few miles. My wife ran the last 5k, Harrison who’s 9 joined the last 3k and Taylor who’s 5 joined for the final 1k. You don’t get to do that at the London Marathon! To top it off, all my neighbours came out to cheer me on as I finished. It was a great feeling.